Varda’s hypersonic flight test bed is the off-the-shelf method to reproduce the most challenging hypersonic and reentry flight environments without building a costly dedicated representative test vehicle. You gain flight heritage through Mach 25 and advance your TRL.
Varda’s orbital capsule enters the atmosphere at 18,000 miles per hour. The capsule hits Mach 25+ on every mission before landing by parachute on Earth. This offers a real flight environment for hypersonic reentry vehicle subsystems such as thermal protective materials, navigation, communication, and sensors. Test as you fly, fly as you test.
Varda’s capsule is designed for rapid iteration and high production rates. We dream of reentry becoming as commonplace as launch and space just another location to manufacture. Modular in design and ready-built for materials rather than humans—our capsule completes the space logistics chain.
The hypersonic test regime currently lacks real-world testing environments and the rapid cadence required to derisk our most advanced aerospace vehicles. Ground testing overly simplifies the coupled flight environment at high Mach speeds, and representative test vehicles are infrequent and expensive. Varda’s capsule offers true-to-flight conditions offering a path to quickly gain flight heritage when it matters most.
Quick but potential inaccuracies
Short duration and false atmospherics
Affordable, frequent, true environments
Accurate but very expensive and infrequent
With a modular design, flexibility to launch on rideshare or dedicated flights, your mission profile is configurable to your exact requirements.
Varda’s capsules are launched into orbit aboard commercial launch vehicles with dedicated options available.
Varda is able to gather relevant payload data while in orbit, before repositioning for terrestrial reentry.
Once in position, Varda's capsule performs its reentry burn setting the capsule on a ballistic trajectory, starting at Mach 25, before releasing its parachutes once at terminal velocity. It's this phase in flight where the majority of information for the reentry and hypersonic community will be gathered.
Varda’s capsule, and all relevant sensors and materials land terrestrially meaning data units, and materials that experienced reentry can be easily recovered and analyzed.
